


Creative Response to 'Speaking of Courage'

by sweetly_sidical



Category: The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 10:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17847809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetly_sidical/pseuds/sweetly_sidical
Summary: One afternoon following Rat Kiley's return from Vietnam, this piece mimics the plot of 'Speaking of Courage', however with different scenarios





	Creative Response to 'Speaking of Courage'

Returning home to the barren, red Arizona desert was just like the first moment I landed in Vietnam, except now the ghosts of the Viet Cong, seemingly everywhere yet at the same time nowhere, were behind me. I found myself on driving around Monument Valley, almost purposely getting myself lost. Sitting in that old black Chevy truck, perfectly safe with all the doors shut, was the most at risk I ever have felt at home. Every turn seemed to take me back to Vietnam, second guessing if that boulder was actually a Viet Cong in disguise, if I was actually alone. Once I arrived at the exit of the national park, I turned back, willing myself to wait just that bit longer before returning home to Ma.   
It wasn’t her fault, she just didn’t understand how in that dark, dense, wet rainforest, us men turned from college student’s to men of war, reacting to a noise by firing our guns rather than checking to see if it was in fact just an animal.  
I remember coming camping nearby here, carrying our tent, food and our supplies to a clearing where we could set up, but whenever I thought about carrying packs on my back, I was transported to how we would hump through the rice paddies in Vietnam, venturing through the jungles, turning our heads at every single sound.  
I thought back how even though she was over the moon when I arrived home, there was a shadow of disappointment in her eyes, her disapproval of the war seemed to carry over to her own son.  
It was the third time I arrived at the outskirts of the park when I parked, and sat with the windows down. I could hear the tone of Ma’s voice when she asked about Vietnam, as if she was interrogating me for a crime.   
I looked around, and recognised the location where I’d taken my best mate from school. He too was enlisted in the war, but he didn’t last a week. He was tall, lanky, too tall to try to hide from a Viet Cong. I received a letter from his Dad, he’d taken a bullet to the head when going to inspect an abandoned village, and I found myself thinking that he was lucky. He didn’t have to deal with coming home to being outcast from his own friends, his own family. I imagined if he’d survived, if we’d come here once we both got out of there.  
“It’s like learning how to operate in society all over again,” he’d remard about returning home.  
“Yeah,” I’d reply, “almost torturous coming back after what we went through, though.”  
“Hmph,” he’d look around him, “better to be here, outcast from our own towns than dead.”  
I turned the truck back on at that thought, thinking of Curt Lemon and how his cooze of a sister never wrote back and how eventually I had felt the power of the war in my bones whenever I fired my gun. But then Curt Lemon had died, and the whole war and the platoon had been too much, how every time I heard a gun fired I felt for the person at the receiving end.   
The look on Ma’s face when I told her about the war would be as if I watched my best friend die all over again.  
“All we could do was fire at a potential threat. It was what we were told our duty was.” I’d explain, refusing to look her in the eye.  
“But why automatically kill somebody?” She would frown at me, and I’d feel reduced to when I was five years old again.  
“I was only nineteen. I should’ve been worrying about if I’d passed my college finals, not whether someone was going to shoot at me,” I’d turn away from her.  
She wouldn’t reply, and I would walk away, because even though at first the power of another person’s life seemed thrilling and enticing and made me feel in control, I knew that since returning from Vietnam and Japan that me saying that would be like disowning myself from being her son, and even I don’t quite agree with my own feelings.  
I finally reached the exit once more, and from here I continued to drive out, as the sun set over the dry land in front of me, and I knew that even though my two best friends had been killed in this war, and even though my own Mother didn’t entirely see me as her son anymore, that I would be okay, because at least I’m not dead.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a task I had to complete in English, so I thought why not share it.  
> \- Grace


End file.
